Religion Dispatches
…hopes and dreams away from the fossil-fueled time that takes humans “out of this world,” and re-ground them in these ambiguous, multiple, planetary times, we can begin to think about and co-construct post-pandemic worlds that are more about the flourishing and resilience of the entire planetary community….
Read More…not have been as infinite as space but it still had the glow of the sacred about it. The photo from the EHT does in many ways appear as I had guessed it would; a ghostly, glowing, eerie ring of luminescence around a pitch blackness. Yet there’s something different about seeing the actual thing-in-itself as opposed to an illustration. This is pictorial evidence of a black hole; this is a photograph of the place where physics falls apart, where logi…
Read More…those fields! But there are essentially no non-Christians who do “creation science” or believe in the literal Genesis account of creation, and there are essentially no non-Christian scholars who believe the Bible is inerrant and that the authors of the four Gospels (who never identify themselves) are the actual people Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is a highly controversial question because it begins to name that which must not be recognized i…
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…ted to the dismal present condition. Advocating for reason and respect for science is a worthy cause in a world being torn apart by racism, nativism, and a corporate power structure that will destroy anything that stands in its way. It’s entirely reasonable to be concerned about religious extremism, but the most visible spokesmen of atheism are throwing fuel on the fire. The narrative of secularism must be rescued from those who would allow it to…
Read More…have “passions, habits, and a certain accountableness, but all is mystery about them.” Whether hyperbole or not, there is a deep mystery about what happens within the minds of our earthly brethren; as in the original, theological meaning of the term referring to the sacred, mysterium. As such, those interactions with our fellow great apes are as a rite with something to tell us about those strange things we call consciousness, interiority, intell…
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…nt responses. Some Muslims argue that if the Qur’an doesn’t go into detail about the origins of the world, or human life, then that’s because God wants us to focus on the moral meaning. The science was left for us mere mortals to divine. Others have proposed that Adam was an archetype for humankind, not a person; that huge chunks of time passed between the forbidden fruit and their Earthly exile; that the Adam in heaven wasn’t quite the Adam on Ea…
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…cientists interact with religion and how religious believers make sense of science. She is the author of Science v. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. In her writing, including including Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety and Trauma and Grace, Serene Jones addresses gender and social justice, challenging the ways that theology has harmed women. She taught theology and women’s studies at Yale for seventeen years and has served as president of Un…
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…dered a sociologist and that his work has no relation to legitimate social science—and by other academic bodies. With respect to religious right players in the United States, he can hardly be considered A-list. The reason that those of us who support LGBT equality should care about his speaking in countries like Russia, however, is that Cameron is clearly taken seriously by some well-placed Russian elites. On his previous visit to Russia in June 2…
Read More…too long. They taught “what was handed down to us” about people of color, about women, about gays and lesbians, heck, even about left-handed people being “of the devil.” Here’s an idea for my conservative brothers and sisters: Instead of teaching “what’s been handed down” to you—namely the condemnation of people of which you disapprove (like people of color, women, gays and transgender people)—how about: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is…
Read More…ke major strides against illness and other forms of preventable suffering. Science and science education were seen as overwhelmingly beneficent, and while the findings of Darwin and others rattled the nerves of persons raised to think of humans as the crown of creation (they rattled Darwin’s own nerves), Americans in Ingersoll’s time were on the whole less anti-scientific than those of our own time, when just under half of adult Americans tell pol…
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